Czech press survey - April 7

published:07.07.2014, 07:22

updated:07.07.2014 07:52

Prague - Why do Czechs not have any film about Vaclav Havel, while Poles have a film about their former president Lech Walesa? Ludek Navara asks in Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD), commenting on the presentation of the film Walesa: Man of Hope at the 49th Czech Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

It is a bizarre encounter of two worlds in one country. Walesa has come to present his film about his fight against Communism to the country that discusses whether anti-Communism ended or whether it ever existed, Navara writes.

There is the question of whether the ideals Havel symbolised were lost. Twenty-five years after the end of Communism, Czechs seem to have lost them on their way to supermarkets, he adds.

Now when they are in them, they find out that they are only full of cheap Chinese goods, Navara writes.

Czechs and Poles were elsewhere before and so they are today: Poles can clearly see that the enemy is the East, he adds.

Unlike many Czech politicians, they know that U.S. troops may be a welcome help in a defence against it, Navara writes.

By the way, the enemy was always in the East and Poles have never ignored it, he adds.

Walesa was heading a rebellion of the workers who were quite poor, while their Czech counterparts were much better off, Alexandr Mitrofanov writes in Pravo, commenting on the idea of why Czechs have not made any film about Havel.

Havel was illegally disseminating the ideas of civic liberties in the environment that was mostly satisfied with Communist regime's material values and that could only be provoked to act by the awareness that in the West, the living standards are much better, Mitrofanov writes.

In fact, the fight of which Walesa is so proud would have been lost if both the milking cow and the guardian of the system, the Soviet Union, had not collapsed, Mitrofanov writes.

The Soviet Union was deserted by its satellite countries and in the Czech Republic, the idea lingered on for at least several years that after it joins the West, the prosperity will immediately come, he adds.

The Social Democrats (CSSD) are standing before a mirror, Lukas Jelinek writes about the forthcoming party referendum in Pravo.

The Social Democrats can rejoice as the referendum will enable its members to basically influence the character of the community in which they work, Jelinek writes.

So why is there so much agitation due to the referendum in some Social Democrat spheres, especially among its officials? he asks.

If the direct vote with its 25 percent quorum collapses due to the lack of interest among party members, the Social Democrats can stop calling themselves a party and might turn to the model of a movement whose members only passively rely on their leaders, as it is the case in Andrej Babis's ANO, Jelinek writes,

One can understand that some Social Democrats are frightened by the sad experience with the poll conducted among them before the 2003 presidential election in 2003, he adds, hinting at the result won surprisingly by Milos Zeman who eventually was not backed by the party's deputies in the election held in parliament.

However, it would be bizarre if Social Democrats saw opponents not in the advocates of different political ideas, but among their own fellow party members, Jelinek writes.